Okay this film has been reviewed in good style by The Zombie Master and there's not much I can add so I'll just whack up a few quick thoughts.

The film sees Romero taking us back to the "beginning" of the zombie outbreak, ala Night of the Living Dead (1968). A group of film students making a horror movie in the woods under the supervision of their alcoholic professor begin to hear strange news reports of the "dead waking up". At first it's dismissed as a hoax (ala the War of the Worlds radio thing) but increasingly strange and brutal events let them know this "hoax" is all too real. The film then follows their attempts to get home and be with their loved ones while attempting to survive the spreading chaos, all filmed from first person perspective by directing major Jay (Joshua Close) on his hand held camera. The film benefits from the return of known and loved "shambling" zombies, innovative hand held camera style that is NOT nausea-inducing (Cloverfield I'm staring in your direction), and good old fashioned tension and gore. It suffers however, from heavy handed narration and a social commentary that bludgeons the viewer over the head far too many times. Okay, the government controlled media are lying to us. We're a society of voyeurs. I get it already! It also suffers from the narrator's ridiculous excuse for the music cues and funky editing in the film. If you are going to go for the hand-held, documentary style, go all the way and have no music. For me, that would have amped up the tension, because every time there was a slow dissolve or a creepy music cue, I was reminded that I was just watching a movie. Taking the premise of the movie in mind, I wanted more realism slathered onto my zombie smorgasbord. That's one thing that Cloverfield has over this film (I stress the ONE thing, this is a far superior effort to that film), it stuck to it's guns and presented itself as "footage found after the chaos" etc.

But those gripes aside, I actually really enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. The beginning was very well done, and put me at ease with familiar feelings that yes, I was watching a good old fashioned Romero zombie flick done on a shoestring budget where the story is king, the grotesque deaths plentiful and varied (the de-fib eyeball pop is an instant favourite) and the characters expendable. The cast was mostly unknown to me, which is always a good thing in a film like this because I couldn't predict who'd get chomped and who'd live, minus of course the knowledge that the most annoying female character obviously survived to provide the woeful narration. Okay one more gripe. The camera guy, Jay, is a bit of a dick. I mean, the bit where he insists on filming the attractive blonde girl being chased by the zombie-mummy-guy instead of, oh, I don't know, putting the fucking camera down for a second, and helping the poor girl had me rolling my eyes. It just wasn't believable, no one as supposedly good natured as Jay would simply film the whole thing without offering an ounce of assistance, even after his insistence that he needs to capture everything on film. This was labouring the "we don't slow down to help, we slow down to watch" point a bit too much.

However these few eye-roll moments were counterbalanced by some truly awesome bits. I really liked Samuel the deaf Amish farmer who saves the group at one point by dynamiting a pack of approaching zombies then turning to the group and displaying a sign enthusiastically announcing: "I'm Samuel. Hello". I love his calm demeanor and the way he just squints slightly as the smoke and zombie remains fall around him. Highly amusing. The scene in the tenement building where the cops take revenge by shooting the old couple in the hearts so they can "wake up dead" is chilling. The black militia hunkered down in the warehouse was a great subplot, and I liked the way it began, with the "my gun is bigger than yours" confrontation in the woods.

Romero keeps his players in line; no one overacts, everyone is believable. And there are some nice little character moments amid some genuine moments of tension and terror. I liked the black militia guy's parting thoughts to Debra, and several quiet moments when the group starts to lose members and they realise that this is for real and they themselves might not make it out alive.

I liked that the chaos has been stripped down once again to it's bare essentials - a small group of survivors just trying to do their utmost to survive the unbelievable carnage they are suddenly and inexplicably faced with. Diary has more in common with the original trilogy than with Land of the Dead (2005).

In closing, the final "downloaded" video shown at the end gave me chills and had me beaming with satisfaction. A great way to end the film.